Marilyn Monroe, 100 years of an eternal icon

The most melancholy of pin-ups is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. Galleries and museums around the world pay tribute to him, the Cinémathèque française opens an exhibition on April 8. But why does this icon with an aborted career still fascinate?

A woman in jeans, with clenched fists, messy hair and a defeated face screams in the middle of the desert: “Killers! Liars! All of you liars! You’re only happy when you can see something die!– Assassins! Liars! You are all liars! You’re only happy when you see something die ! –” On the other hand, her cowboy-like playing partners disdain her: “She’s crazy. They’re all crazy. – She’s crazy. They are all crazy. – ”

Niagara, Men prefer blondes, Seven years of reflection, The Billionaire or even Some like it hotMarilyn still in her twenties is propelled to the rank of world star, her face permeates America of which she is the idol.

In the cinema she is timeless, her silhouette and her face have marked the history of the 7th art. Marilyn always fascinates and inspires. Pedro Almodovar paid tribute to him in Broken Embraces (2009), where we found Pénélope Cruz dressed in a blonde wig. The same year, Scarlett Johansson also transformed into Marilyn for Dolce & Gabbana. The entertainment industry has largely taken over his image…

At a time when aging is the greatest Hollywood vice, where actresses imprisoned in a fixed image of beauty, which allows neither wrinkles nor white hair, resort to cosmetic surgery, Marilyn is eternally associated with youth. No actress can match her: Monroe is forever 36 years old. She disappears shortly before passing this critical age that many fear, like Jodie Foster, who has been told so often that once she turns 40, an actress’ career ends.

But none of these sultry blonde roles satisfied him, all of them feature his physique rather than his personality. So the young woman innovates. If she was unable to establish herself in major roles, in 1954 she decided to found the Marilyn Productions with Milton Green. The blonde takes a step aside by imposing her vision of cinema. She is one of the first to initiate this gesture in a universe hostile to seeing women in leadership. The pioneer was Mary Pickford, another Hollywood actress, who founded “United Artists” in 1926. Others will then imitate Marylin, other blondes with overwhelming and international popularity, like Margot Robbie with her production company LuckyChap or even Sydney Sweeney who created Fifty-Fifty Films in 2020. Nearly 70 years later, the icon’s trajectory still shapes Hollywood and its children.

In 2022, Kim Kardashian appeared as Marilyn on the steps of the Met Gala. The influencer brought the world’s most famous birthday back to life, a famous evening in May 1962… In the age of social networks and the mass distribution of images, the silhouette of the blonde still survives. The most influential stars adopt its codes. Everyone gravitates around their body, to which we try to conform. But today we might find her nose a little strong, a stomach not flat enough… The times demand it: beauty standards have tightened, being beautiful is a performance, as shown in Caroline Fargeat’s feature film, The Substance. What makes the icon charming is the naturalness of his expressions mixed with the sophistication of his gestures.

The actress also touches the intellectual and artistic circle, of which she so wanted to be a part. She is the idol of dramatic actresses. Isabelle Adjani, who, at the age of 17, made her debut on the stages of the Comédie Française, pays tribute to him in a play: Vertigo Marilyn. On stage, the actress, muse of French auteur cinema, dialogues with the disillusioned pin-up. In her diaries, Norma Jeane affirms her sensitivity, her intelligence that she was unable to expose: a secret Marilyn that authors and actresses try to revive today.

But it was Lee Strasberg who was the first to detect this side of the young woman. In 1955, she took classes at the Actors Studio. Very quickly, the artistic director was struck by her personality and spotted in her a talent imbued with anxiety. His dreams of composition roles are starting again. And in 1961, luck seemed to change. She turns the Misfitsa film by John Huston and a screenplay by her husband Arthur Miller. She plays Roslyn, a young woman adrift, just divorced. Far from the submissive heroines that she usually plays, her character in rebellion with the male gender offers Marilyn the opportunity to shine with a role of great depth. And the actress bursts onto the screen. In the most memorable scene of the feature film, the actress screams: “All of you liars ! “She reveals a sincere and powerful performance but the sequence is filmed from afar. Would we have borne seeing on screen a Marilyn who does not care about the gaze of men? The film is very poorly received by critics and the public. Norma Jeane’s opportunity is shattered. But today Huston’s work enjoys great popularity. If the actress appeared second in the credits, after Clark Gable, the Misfits refer only to her. Men no longer appreciate it only for its plasticity but for its strength. In 2019, the designer Luz rehabilitated it in a comic book entitled Hollywood liar. And on the cover, we find a screaming Marilyn, the perfect replica of the scene from Misaligned.

On the occasion of its 100th anniversary, Editions Seghers publishes a new book which traces the conversations between the icon and the journalist WJ Weatherby, Conversations with Marilyn.

Many actresses identify with her legend, victims like her of the myth of the beautiful girl. If she is one of the first to become a producer, she is also a pioneer of the #metoo movement. As a child, Norma Jeane suffered a sexual assault. At the age of 12, the young girl decides to alert her host mother, in one of the many families where she was placed, about this tragedy, she will be responded with a reproach. Many years later, during the golden age of Hollywood, the young woman faced the same problems.

In the 1940s, the life of a Hollywood pin-up was not so easy: you had to know how to escape the hands of crooked producers, and there were many of them… The actress refused to give in to the blackmail of one of these “wolves” with big cigars, as she called them. Marilyn Monroe is above all the story of a woman. The icon serves as a leading figure in the fight against a very feminine disease that is only beginning to make headlines: endometriosis. In 2022, American actress Lena Dunham, in an article titled What Marilyn Monroe Means to Metold the intimate story of Marilyn, often put aside by biographers. To her doctor she wrote: “Dear Dr. Rabwin, cut as little as possible. (…) Being a woman means a lot to me. Save please (…) what you can”.

It is her childish air, so friendly, in this very, too feminine body, it is her premature end and the mystery of her death, the contrast between the sensitive soul and the media sex symbol that make Marilyn an icon apart. If she has never managed to get rid of her sex symbol image, others have succeeded. In September 2024, the blondeBaywatchthe great sensual icon of the 90s, dropped her red swimsuit for a nostalgic feather crown. Pamela Anderson made her big comeback, unvarnished, in a compositional role with The Last Showgirl. But if she was able to outwit the tortuous Hollywood system it is also because the times are more lenient. So Pamela continues to write Marilyn, reinventing the image of the blonde pin-up.

At his funeral, Lee Strasberg pays tribute to Norma Jeane. In his eyes, his career “was just beginning”.